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I think we nerds need to get more facetime access to the rest of the world. All these "stranger danger" kids are now stranger danger adults.

I'd say that apart from the PyCon organizers, who made the best out of a bad situation, everyone else in the story - Adria, her employers, Mr-Hank, and his employer - all made dick moves, but... hang on, my boss wants to talk to me.

There was a much more informative post that got skipped :http://slashdot.org/submission/2558213/pycon-twitter-callout-incident

A few details you might wish to know about the incident :

0. SendGrid is an email spammer. Yes, they only send legal spam, stuff the direct marketers want you to call bacn, but really most of the emails they send you do not want. Anything bad that happens to SendGrid is a good thing.

1. Apparently mr-hank only made one sexual crack, the dongles one. He apologized for that one quickly. Richards miss-interpreted his "forking" comment as sexual, actually homosexual. If you really believed she took offense to what he actually said, then you'd eventually conclude that she was a homophobe. That isn't correct. She simply miss-heard him.

2. Richards has pissed people off by pulling similar publicity stunts several times before :http://amandablumwords.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/3/

3. Ms Richards defense of her actions was completely fucking bonkers. Some girl "would never have the chance to learn and love programming because the ass clowns behind me would make it impossible for her to do so." Really? Joan of Arc? Really? Pfff. She's simply grandstanding to her twitter followers.https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/313442430848487424

4. Richards made a much worse joke about some guys balls much more publicly on twitter earlier in the day.https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425

5. PlayHaven isn't such a nice company either. In game micro-transactions sounds like your business is built upon ripping off poor people. It doesn't bother me as much as spam since I don't play any games like that, but worth mentioning.

Anyways I hope Mr-Hank and Richards find new jobs quickly and that SendGrid continues to lose business.

"0. SendGrid is an email spammer. Yes, they only send legal spam, stuff the direct marketers want you to call bacn, but really most of the emails they send you do not want. Anything bad that happens to SendGrid is a good thing."

If by spam your view is that all mass mail, including that which is specifically opt-in is spam then sure, but that's a definition of spam pretty much no one else recognises.

There are many legitimate uses of SendGrid and they explicitly try and ensure their servers are viewed as trustworthy by spam filters by explicitly actively dealing with people who send unsolicited mail.

Companies use them for everything from opt-in newsletters, to sales/invoice confirmation dispatch for e-commerce companies, to couriers dispatching delivery updates, to internal corporate newsletters, and many other things.

Your understanding of what SendGrid is is completely wrong. There is a legitimate need for high volume e-mail dispatch services, and someone has to provide that. As providers go SendGrid does a good job of keeping spammers off the network and as someone who has worked on a completely non-spam high volume mail system for a client I can assure you they put a lot of effort into vetting you before you can even use them - i.e. they want evidence of domain ownership, description and samples of e-mails you intend to send (and diverging from the types of e-mails is grounds for termination). They seem to have effective policies for individuals wanting to complain about unsolicited mail sent from their servers too.

It's like saying Slashdot is a child porn site because some troll once probably linked kiddie porn here or whatever.

re: everyone else in the story - Adria, her employers, Mr-Hank, and his employer - all made dick moves,.
You are correct. Despite her gender, Adria was being a dick. I should have thought of that line for my comment below: Twitter-shaming. [slashdot.org]

She's a hypocrite. She's made the same sorts of jokes but in public, not as part of an overheard private conversation. From the article:

Incidentally, making off-color jokes in public doesn't necessarily make you a horrible human being who deserves public shaming, a point that Richards herself should appreciate as she recently joked [twitter.com] with a fellow Twitter user about stuffing his pants with socks the next time he has to undergo a TSA pat-down.

Apparently, it's only sexist if done by men (which is a very sexist attitude for her to have).

No, she - and you, are completely wrong, and the reason is so trivially simple that it's a wonder you don't understand it. Racism is about treating someone based upon their race rather than as an individual. To summarise how black people can be racist, when I was at school in the 80s we had 3 black kids in our class (UK, inner London school). Two considered themselves to be Jamaican, and therefore would pick on the third who they considered to be African. Their interaction with him consisted of bullying, abuse based upon his perceived country of origin etc. Racism may be about power, but it is a position of power *under the circumstances* not whether you have over-arching power in society at large.

Apparently, it's only sexist if done by men (which is a very sexist attitude for her to have).

I hope it's only a small road block on the road to real equality, but right now, yeah, men are often treated as guilty of being sexists, misogynists and chauvinists because they are men, and have to live to higher standards to prove they aren't. And those arseholes who give men a bad name by wholf-whistling at pretty girls, don't help the cause either - it just gives the extremists on the other side more fuel for their bigoted fire.

Until the day it's just as distasteful for women to talk about men's dick size as it is for men to talk about women's cunt size, we have a ways to go.

If a guy finds a girl's sex toys, it shows that he's a pervert.If a girl finds a guy's sex toys, it shows that he's a pervert.

God forbid anyone TALK about their being differences between men and women. It drives me crazy what people will go through to make themselves feel victimized. If you can't overhear someone near you making a crude joke without feeling uncomfortable, you have a problem and it's not their joke. A persons insecurities are not the rest of the worlds fault.

Plus, it drives me crazy when women (I have known many of them) try to call anything that makes them personally uncomfortable with "sexism".

Believe it or not, one time another woman at work said it to my face, in so many words: "Sexism is anything that makes me uncomfortable." [emphasis mine] She really did. My jaw hit the floor. Because anybody can be "uncomfortable" about anything. That is not a social standard. It's the sort of thing said by someone who is either terminally insecure, or a power monger. Take your pick.

In the case of Adria, I vote for power monger. Look at this tweet. [twitter.com] Joan of Arc, my lily white ass. At least Joan actually had the guts to go to war. She didn't just have people assassinated.

I have news for you guys... but maybe it isn't news after all: in the locker room, women are just as crude and lewd as men are. They just try to pretend otherwise in public.

In this case... well, I'll just say she needs to grow up. Maybe getting fired will wise her up a little.

"IRC, her twitter post was semi-private, being automatically visible to the intended recipient (and potentially mutual followers) but nobody else."

Um, no. It depends entirely on how you are viewing Twitter. Since it wasn't a Direct Message, literally anybody could go to her Twitter page, for example, and see the tweet. So it was public as hell. In fact, if you think about it, her tweet was a hell of a lot more public than some stupid jokes at a conference, because only a few people heard that. But by now, thousands upon thousands of people have SEEN her tweet, not just heard about it third-hand.

a distinction between a talking loudly at a conference and a twitter mention. IIRC, her twitter post was semi-private...OTOH, if you're talking loud enough to be overheard in a crowded conference hall that's far less private

You have it wrong. A twitter is permanent, deliberately documented, and publicly available. An overheard conversation is anything but. Your claim that twitter is somehow more private is ludicrous - this/. post wouldn't exist if it were. Likewise, their conversation wouldn't be known except for her publicizing it via twitter.

Free speech is good and well unless you don't agree with it or the reactions to it, right? Right-o.

And you don't see the irony? She obviously agrees with you. She thinks she has the right to post their pictures and quote a private conversation in public, but they're wrong for making a dirty joke (which wasn't directed or told to her) in private conversation?

People have no right to not be offended. They need to get over it and learn some tolerance.

First off, the jokes (as described) were juvenile, but in no way misogynistic.

Second, you're creating a false dichotomy for her choices. Richards also had the option to privately go to the event's organizers and present her complaint. Instead, she decided to publicly shame these guys for a stupid joke, resulting in getting one of them fired. She most certainly overreacted as well, making a move that belongs every bit as much to the confines of a high school as did the jokes by the two men.

First off, the jokes (as described) were juvenile, but in no way misogynistic.

This.

She didn't even bother to look up what the term 'sexism' means before going on a tantrum.

What she think it means: Any kind of language oriented on sexual organs or any kind of sexual acts.

What it means: Sexism/noun/ - Prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex.

A couple of examples:

Not sexism: "I'd like to fondle my dongle." "I want to have sex with that girl".

Sexism: "OMG a woman behind a steering wheel! Everybody run for cover!" "Get back into the kitchen, biatch!"

Of course, there is this other thing, called "sexual harassment" which does include things like asking somebody for sexual favors. However, from what I can gather, this is not what the guys in question did. They were not addressing her or even talking about her. It really was just a case of using foul language.

How was it sexist to talk about big dicks? I'm sure if they talked about big boobs that would be "sexist" too?

So is talking about sexual body parts inherently sexist or something?

It seems to me that making that accusation in the first place, inherently, is sexist... as if women can't talk or hear about about body parts.

This situation is especially funny to me, because I still do occasional support for my ex-girlfriend's mother's small business. She is an ultra-liberal feminazi type. I recall a few months ago mentioning a dongle... and she cracked a "haha dongle sounds like a slang word for penis" type of joke. I guess this means she must secretly hate women or something?

Sure, it was probably an inappropriate joke to make in public--but because it was juvenile, not because it was "sexist." It seems me that Adria Richards saw some type of moment to be seen as a crusader for women and lost site of the actual non-issue at hand. Her website is "butyoureagirl.com," after all. She needs to take a step back and stop trying to define herself by the fact that she's a woman doing things that primarily men do.

I still do occasional support for my ex-girlfriend's mother's small business. She is an ultra-liberal feminazi type. I recall a few months ago mentioning a dongle... and she cracked a "haha dongle sounds like a slang word for penis" type of joke.

That is funny. And exactly the problem they have trying to make us men feel guilty about these things. They make the same comments, in the same innocent manner, and would be shocked if they found out that someone felt offended by their words. (Not that you were offended, I imagine.)

In today's corporate world, the test for "sexual harassment" is "made someone uncomfortable". No rationality applies. A manager can be sued personally (and lose) because someone on his team made a joke that made someone else feel uncomfortable. It has become over-the-top ridiculous these days.

Does anyone even know what the jokes were? A "dongle" joke could be anything from a lame hammy pun you might catch on a sitcom to outrageously misogynistic rape-humor. It's kind of hard to form a valid opinion of the whole thing without that bit of info.

Anyone remember the tech advertisement "Lost the Dongle" that ran in just about every IT rag published back in the nineties. It featured a picture of a famous nude statue that was missing its "dongle".

I just went through a freaking training course for sexual harassment. More than one scenario wasn't much different than the one she was in. Two employees say something that offends a third. In each case the action was to speak to the employees directly vs trying to make an instant federal case out of it and if uncomfortable doing that speak to a supervisor. In no scenario was a single action bad enough to warrant a firing or going nutz over it. This surprised me since in some of those scenarios I was escalating earlier than the test said i should be.

Honestly this woman shot herself in the foot. Supposedly she's supposed to be an evangelist and interact with developers right? As a developer, having seen her get two other developers into deep shit, would you want this woman anywhere near you? Would you even want to speak to her? She's supposed to fit in and get other's interested in her product?! Firing her was a smart move and IMO they should probably have done it sooner, hell look at some of the crap she's tweeted in the past! these two guys were talking among themselves and while it might not have been a completely private conversation it certainly wasn't one pointed at her. She could have simply asked them to keep the jokes to themselves but instead thought Oh Noes I must save the children! Give me a freakin' break, she is an idiot and she wanted her moment of fame. Good, now she has it and i hope that any future employer who considers her for ANY sort of opportunity that includes interfacing with people thinks twice. I not only wouldn't want to speak to this woman I wouldn't want her on the premises for fear she might become traumatized over something and cry to the world. People who have nerves this exposed shouldn't be allowed in public. Should these guys have been a little smarter, sure. But what she did was over the top and the company involved is obviously not too bright either. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if their HR policy was violated over this if it's anything like the policies in companies I've worked.

What a mess. Sorry lady but you didn't advance anything and in fact you made things worse if anything. If there were anyone around me like you I'd steer very clear of them and make sure never to find myself alone with you lest you make an accusation I couldn't disprove. Sheesh!

My boss recently told me that "someone" in the office had overheard me say something to another person and it made her feel "uncomfortable".

And.... I'm supposed to do what with this information? I can't very well avoid saying something again if I don't know what, when, where, or to whom I said it in the first place, where it was apparently overheard by some anonymous 3rd person.

On the other hand, if whoever I offended has just said, "Hey, that's gross you asshole", I would have apologized on the spot and been careful to never have a similar conversation near her again. Problem would have been solved.

I'm sorry you have issues with confrontation. I find that if someone is annoying enough for me to shush them in a theater that any threats made by them are usually met by the growls of a dozen or more patrons around me. They also have these things called ushers, they can be asked to intercede on your behalf if you cannot stand up to others. I'm told they have these at conferences too, why they even have them at ballgames for when the dork in front of you gets too drunk and begins cursing the players in front of your child. These are the appropriate people to contact, not take pictures of the offending person and whine to the world about how they are just going to RUIN little Suzie's potential career. Spare me, she wanted attention, she got it, now she's discovered it cuts both ways - I hope she has a tough time finding another job as a result and gets to think deeply about her actions.

Yes, she was out of line. If I'm offended am I justified in throwing a tantrum? NO. Do I demand that no one ever offend me? Is it a requirement? NO IT IS NOT! Do you really want to live in a world where you're not allowed to say anything that might offend another? Even while speaking to someone else in a public setting? I don't, not ever. Offending others isn't the end of the world and neither is "being bothered" by something. Grow up and please do not pass this crap onto your children.

So NO, it should NOT have been a Federal case, It was a conversation that did NOT include her, that she actually misinterpreted, and that she had no reason to intercede in. She made a fool out of herself and out of her company for being a damned drama queen and I for one am quite happy to NOT work with people such as herself. The women I work with are reasonable and on the occasion that someone has offended them they have said something to the offender and the behavior has ceased without anyone having their paycheck dinged. If one of them say something I don't like I tell them too and it's not a problem. This is how adults handle themselves, this woman acted like a child.

It's not that you shouldn't have them; everyone should have them. It's that you cannot reasonably expect to keep them when at the first challenge you willingly abandon them. Obviously then you will eventually lose your rights.

Great elitist attitude you have there.

To be an elitist would mean that I demanded other people protect my rights while I sat on a couch, fanning myself and eating grapes.

To be for the commoner is to realize that unless everyone is willing to fight for basic rights, everyone is in danger of losing them. People like you are the weak link that allows rights to be diminished for everyone - after all you are in a real position of power compared to the poor, so when you do not fight for your rights the rights of a thousand thousand others fall.

I don't think they were dumb or stupid. Naive is probably more accurate. They came from an environment where dongles and forking were not seen as offensive.

They met the one type of person in the world, the type of person they've probably never met before and nobody warned them about, that decided that such kinds of double ententdre are intolerable and offensive.

I work in a mixed office. The guys make jokes. The girls make jokes too. The girls watch sports and make comments about the masculinity (or lack thereof) of various players - and if you've ever happened to overhear women talking when they think nobody else is around in the break room, you might be shocked yourself.

There are lines that should be drawn but I just don't see these guys as having crossed it. This is about one person who has an axe to grind and a radical agenda to advance. She may think in her mind that she represents all women in this, but that is far from the truth.

Exactly, the woman was one of those "politically correct or die!" ultra radicals that frankly make a workplace into a shithole. My ex had one of those at her work and man they just could not wait to find an excuse to fire the bitch, they went from having a fun working environment where everybody cracked jokes and had a good time to a place that was like working in a mortuary. She even tried to get my ex labeled as racist for telling an Indian joke...and she is a fricking Navajo! When people would confuse her with Mexican and start speaking Spanish at her she'd go "Me no Mexican, me Indian, me kind scalp your kind" which always got a laugh and diffused what could have been embarrassing situation for the person that made an assumption based on skin color but nope, can't have that when little miss cob up her ass was around.

So I'm sorry for the guys but after reading her comments I say good riddance to Ms PC Police, I hope she has trouble finding work because I've dealt with them before and if you want to take all the joy and happiness out of a workplace? just hire one of these little politically correct types and watch the mood deflate like air out of a balloon, they really need to lighten the fuck up.

Usually the jokes aren't double entendre, but just bad puns. "I'd like to fork her with my dongle" is not a double entendre. There is no literal meaning (you might laod a fork on a dongle, but you wouldn't "fork" a person, nor would a dongle help you accomplish it if you could). It's a single entendre. That's just a bad pun. Hearing she brought her leftovers and remarking loudly "I'd like to taste her soufflé" could be a double entendre, and contains no puns.

Funny, that doesn't seem to be the situation in US Law [wikipedia.org]. Intent appears to make a major difference there. Why must people be held to a higher standard in their personal lives? Oh, yeah, the all-important political correctness thing...

Wait, I have to change my behaviour depending on the gender of the person I'm with? You sexist fuck.

I treat women equally. It's what I've been told my entire life that I must do. Now you're telling me I'll get into shit for it?

I can't win. I wont play if I can't win. Fuck 'em, they can deal with it or they can fuck off.

In the workplace this translates to: I bitch about the company having a 'Women's Network' and not a Men's one. (Hell, I joined the Women's Network - to be fair, they welcomed me.) I point out the hypocrisy that men have to wear suit+tie, women can wear slacks+t-shirt. I point out that giving carparking spaces to women ahead of men "because they're scared of being attacked" is actually counter-intuitive, given that men are far more likely to be attacked. I bitch about the disparity between maternity and paternity pay. I bitch when a man is expected to work longer hours but the woman is allowed to leave early for her kids. (Hey - that man has kids too!)

I also support women getting promoted, getting equal pay and being able to make the same politically incorrect jokes as men. Just don't expect me to act differently because they're women.

Well, I can't read her blog unless I enable javascript so I'm going to have to skip reading her point of view. But the calmly reasoned and stated response from one of the audience members behind Adria (a Mr Hank) whom Adria "twitter-shamed" (rather than speaking to directly) said (in quotes below) :

He was less forgiving of her reporting him and his associate in the manner that she did -- that is, taking her complaint to Twitter, complete with their photo, rather than confronting them face to face. He pointed out that she is well known for her work and social activism and has an extensive Web audience. "With that great power and reach comes responsibility. As a result of the picture she took I was let go from my job today. Which sucks because I have three kids and I really liked that job," he wrote. -- from http://www.infoworld.com/t/technology-business/twitter-shaming-can-cost-you-your-job-214956 [infoworld.com]

I think that he's right. In the time that it took to turn around and take that picture, she could just as easily have said "Hey, cut it out! Those kinds of comments are inappropriate, and I'm offended, okay?" This is a point where saying "don't make a federal case out of it" may be apropos. Does she want them to walk around wearing big "L" for losers on their foreheads, or "D" for "dicks" for what offensive things they said? Maybe she needs to reread that Scarlet Letter book.

We weren't there. We didn't hear what was said. We don't know how offensive it might have been.

It was so offensive that ONE person said ANYTHING about it.

Women live in a culture where the NORMAL response to reporting rape or sexual assault is to be asked what they did to provoke it

I'm not sure what country you live in, but PyCon was held in my country, its called America, and women haven't actually felt that way any time in my entire life, and my understanding is that it was that way some time before I was born as well. How many times have you been raped and had someone ask you what you did to deserve it? Perhaps the problem is you and what you believe rather than reality.

If you wanted things to truely be equal you wouldn't be treating sexual assault differently than any other kind of assault. You don't want to be treated the same, you want to be treated the same when it suits you, and special when it suits you better.

You are not a normal woman, you're just a bitch with an agenda. You're an insult to women.

I think you have misunderstood what I was trying to say. I don't think every woman is a delicate flower unable to withstand even the slightest breeze. I have worked in predominately male environments, first in construction and then IT for over 20 years and have stood my own ground any time I've needed to.

There is however a problem that most women face where the blokey culture can be excluding to women or derogatory and on rare occasions threatening. I've worked with people who thought that on face value that I would be incompetent based purely on the contents of my underwear even though I was generally the team leader of the relevant team based on experience and merit.

I've had colleagues about whom I've struggled with the decision on whether I should tell them their behaviour was offensive and whether telling them would make any difference. They were the type of guys who would make quite explicit comments about other female coworkers, clients or vendors in front of me and made me wonder what they said about me behind my back.

As a team leader I've had to talk to team members about bullying of a young coworker who was gay. I've mentored young female graduates who have had older coworkers make suggestive comments and persistently ask them out when they've said no. In most cases I've dealt with it within the team without involving HR - though these days they prefer to have everything on record just in case.

The point I made in my previous post was that we don't know exactly what she heard - or thought she heard. We weren't there. And that it is always difficult to judge at what point to say "No, Stop". Maybe she pulled the trigger early and Twitter probably wasn't the smartest move. As a result people will dismiss other complaints like hers in much the same way people joke about the woman who sued McDonalds for spilling coffee on herself without knowing the facts of the case.

There are serious issues in how women are treated in IT and other male dominated businesses. A lot of them are to do with male entitlement and are expressed in the form of sexual harassment. There is no clear litmus test that defines 'this is acceptable' but 'that is not acceptable' and the boundary can vary from person to person and how they are feeling on the day. This will probably always cause conflict, or at least for many years to come. Certainly most guys are working to improve how they behave around women in the workplace, but there are also plenty of neanderthals still out there and coming to the party fresh from college and university.

If sexism were to be defeated, it would mean hearts and minds would change and it would become a non-issue.

This is something very different. This is a chilling effect and a one-way weapon against males. The same would never happen if the roles were opposite. This is no different than the mentality we generally maintain that it's funny for women to hurt men but tragic and horrific for men to hurt women.

This doesn't "fight" sexism, it defines it. The worst thing is all of this harm is done without the benefit of a trial, a warning or any sense of fairness.

If sexism were to be defeated, it would mean hearts and minds would change and it would become a non-issue.

This is something very different. This is a chilling effect and a one-way weapon against males. The same would never happen if the roles were opposite. This is no different than the mentality we generally maintain that it's funny for women to hurt men but tragic and horrific for men to hurt women.

This doesn't "fight" sexism, it defines it. The worst thing is all of this harm is done without the benefit of a trial, a warning or any sense of fairness.

Truth.

The reaction was completely out of proportion and entirely based on her claim. I'm not saying she's lying. I'm saying there was no evidence and I doubt anyone even bothered to listen to the guy's side of it.

Yeah, the comment wasn't even sexist. It was sexual and it was inappropriate but that does not make it sexist. Doing shit like this only has the effect of alienating people who otherwise agree with the fact that there are large scale issues of genuine sexist and creepy stalker behavior that is directed towards women at conventions and in the greater tech community at large.

Good for her. She stood up for herself when she was threatened (triggered). What was the trigger? She saw a photo on main stage of a little girl who had been in the Young Coders workshop. She realized immediately that she had to do something or that little girl would never have the chance to learn and love programming because the ass clowns behind her would make it impossible for the little girl to do so. What did these ass clowns do? They began making sexual forking jokes. What happened after the forking joke? A dongle joke. Incredible. Just like Popeye, she "couldn't stands it no more" and took action.

Hardly. I think this blog post sums it up best. http://amandablumwords.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/3/ [wordpress.com]. She didn't try and work with anyone, she wasn't out to correct anything. She was out use her bully pulpit to 1: make herself more important 2: hurt those that had the audacity to offend her. That said it doesn't excuse by ANY means the attitudes show both for and against her position that went well beyond the pale. What's more sad is at the VERY SAME conference she was offended at she made this jewel: https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425 [twitter.com]. Reeks of hypocrisy.

You are a misandrist. She did not feel that sexual jokes were offensive. The evidence is sitting on her own twitter page where she posted her own sexual jokes from the same event. She was offended by men. By their existence and unwillingness to bow down before her perceived superior gender. This is an ongoing problem, and I know that I am tired of hearing how my son should not have the same rights or future opportunities because someone he has never met treated someone else that he has never met badly. If she wants to be a hero, the fist step is not behaving exactly like the villains.

Two people at a conference telling jokes you find offensive? Ok, say something to them. Her taking it to Twitter is no different than the faceless drones threatening her via twitter - too coward to confront someone face to face - instead attacking someone via the Internet.

She is a self described activist, who is too afraid to confront two nerds?

A bit of human decency, on both parties (aka: talking to another human being) would have mitigated this entire situation and two people would still have their jobs.

Come on you puritan sods! Grow a pair of balls.Now if the developers made a sexual joke about that Adria woman , than I would consider this sexual harassment. But some wordplay? On Forking? And big dongles? What's next; "Oh no's, he said that we should go 'finger' the cullprit who broke into our unix account. Let's put tar and feathers on him and carry him around on a metal bar!"I am goddamn happy I live on the ole' Continent where you can swear profanely on the workfloor when you break your skull underneath your desk while searching for that loose USB cable or make funny comebacks to loose the tension like that female developer who shouted "that's what he said" after the frantic cry of the assistant server-admin "i can't get it up!".

You are creating a generation of scared, stressed, puritan bastards. One visit to a Scottish , Flemish or Basque pub and they probably faint upon hearing the "feck this pissbeer" or "my, those are big jugs. No offense lady!"

As a owner of a tech company I can say with all honesty that I don't discriminate at all when I hire. All I see when I am hiring is how much money you can make me. That is it. My employees are nothing more then an investment.
That being said it is bullshit like this that makes me think twice about hiring women. When I hire a women I have to take into account the risk of a sexual harassment charge that does not really exist if I hire a male.

There is *no* right not to be offended. US case law (and the First Amendment) is clear on this.

If the guys are being inappropriate, that is one thing, but no-one ought to claim they have a right to not be offended. What was offensive to Richards was clearly not offensive to many other people. Personally I find hyper-sensitivity to be somewhat offensive, yet I don't feel the need to wage jihad against her. I've seen this behavior before from women (including getting guys chucked out of university for chuckling at inappropriate jokes). If *she* was offended then it is up to *her* to point this out to the culprits - without doing so in an offensive way herself. That's what a mature person would do. She can't claim they were threatening in any way, because their apologetic posture shows they were probably approachable for a mature person to make their point to.

Furthermore, there are a number of troubling aspects to Richards' claim (and those that support her narrow-minded point-of-view):
Who gets to decide what is offensive or not?
Should government, the legal profession, or business decide what is an appropriate joke or not?
There is only one solution, Free Speech. Free Speech is not about stuff you agree with - it is a principle that protected stuff you don't agree with (provided it is not out-and-out hate speech; eg. such as the racist and anti-Semitic core doctrines of the political ideology called Islam).

The solution is for companies to say, "We did not mean to offend you. However, we stand up for Free Speech for all out employees and don't believe we have the right to dictate what they can think or say, provided it is legal.". Too bad the World is full of beta personalities who cower at the thought of causing offense, rather than alpha personalities who may be brusque, but at least they stand up for moral principals (even if this is unpopular).

So grow some 'nads by fellow Slashdotters. You are either for Free Speech, and would not fire these guys (even if you would take them aside in private to tell them to cool it off a bit), or you believe in Political Correctness where someone else may dictate what you can say, hear and think. The real problem with PC is not that it dictates and denies what people can say, it denies that multitude of other people the right to hear (what can often be unpleasant but truthful).

Richards didn't confront the people who allegedly offended her. She did nothing in person to convey that she found the comments made inappropriate. What she did was and use her influence to damage the commenters' social status. Basically, this is how females fight. Guys are fucking useless at this shit and don't understand it.

As a woman, "self-proclaimed nerd", I am highly offended by the actions of Adria Richards. Her offense offends me. Did anyone commit any wrongs towards her? Absolutely not. These men weren't talking to her, or even about her. Now, if one of them had pointed at her and said something like, "I'd like to use my big dongle on her" or something, then perhaps it would make sense to be offended. Even if that were so, who cares? If she wants to label herself with stereotypes, "nerds" are generally classified as socially-awkward and sexually frustrated. Why was she so surprised by their conversation? They weren't even being sexually explicit, they were cracking puns. I wish that I had been at the conference with her and seen her tweet. I would have found her, sat next to her, and whispered to her asking her if she's seen any big dongles recently. It's honestly women like this that make people not want to hire women. I would have been angry with her even if she had tried to settle this woman-to-man, so to say. There was nothing to settle, nothing to fix. No one did anything wrong. Her passive-aggressive attitude led to the firing to people who didn't deserve it.

You know, I try to avoid making comments on things I know are going to be controversial because I'm always going to piss off xx% of people, and I really don't set out to piss off anyone. (Except when I do...) But sometimes, something so heinously, irredeemably, goddamn stupid happens, and I have to vent or I'll simply explode. So here goes all my friggin' karma... PLEASE NOTE: My opinions are simply based on events as they have been described.

While I wish I could be all diplomatic and say that everyone involved shares the blame for this incident, that wouldn't be honest. He's a nerd, making nerd jokes, to another nerd, at a nerd convention. The stuff he supposedly said is just silly. Sure, there's SORT OF innuendo there, but it's like middle school stuff. There was nothing overtly-sexual or graphic about it, and he was having what he thought was an at least semi-private conversation. It was those two computer nerds in WarGames. It wasn't a truck stop on the Jersey turnpike.

I get that she found it offensive, and that's her right. But the fact that she was (supposedly) smiling as she took the damning TwitPic just seems... I don't know. Malicious? What was that supposed to be? "Heh, I'll fix YOU! I'm going to tell the INTERNET!" The whole thing just seems so damned petty.

Replace her phone with a gun, and now we're closer to what happened; *Bang!* There goes your job.

Let's take that analogy and run with it, as one might with a pair of scissors! (Well, as I might, anyway.) If I overhear someone making dumb comments behind me, I'm probably going to just roll my eyes. The most I might do, is tell them to shut up. I'm not going to turn around and SHOOT them. (Probably.)

She defends her actions, saying that in order to make the IT industry safe for women, she HAD to shoot him.

I really don't want to sound biased just because I'm a guy, because on its most fundamental level this has nothing to do with gender. Look at the situation; You have two people carrying on a private conversation, albeit a dumb and juvenile one. A third person overhears them, and instead of asking them to kindly shut the hell up snaps a photograph of them, grabs the internet bullhorn (With which they are apparently quite skilled), and says "Internet, you wouldn't BELIEVE what these two bozos just said!". Then one of those 'bozos' loses his job. Twitter shaming; No less asinine and juvenile than the dongle jokes.

I want to see more women in the tech industries, I want to see more female makers and tinkerers. Why? It's not just because I think we need more beauty to balance out the neckbeards. It's because I think technology and making things are TOTALLY FUCKIN' AWESOME and everyone deserves a turn!

This is not how that happens. This is how the gap gets bigger. Please stop. Sexual harassment is a completely reprehensible thing, and it happens way too often. In the tech industry, in every industry, in society in-general. But every time an incident like this gets ink, it only makes things harder on those experiencing legitimate harassment.

Okay, putting all that aside, so far, this has just been my reaction to what actually happened at PyCon. That was admittedly a very small slice of the pi--incident. (I couldn't go through with it, sorry.) Let's talk about the aftermath.

So, 'Mr-Hank' loses his job... That's really unfortunate... I think his employer overreacted, but the reality is, with the way everything goes viral these days, dropping him like he's radioactive and ON FIRE probably seemed like the best course of action from a PR standpoint, since it was like he was very publicly being accused of sexual harassment, and you don't play around with that. I even feel bad about his apology, because while it was ultimately the right thing to do, it just felt like too much for what he did, like it was just more shaming...

Ms. Richards loses her job, which is also unfortunate, but I can't say that I hold her blameless. Her employer had no choice but to fire her; they're a media

Two men being immature at a conference and they lose their livelihood because someone quasi-famous tweeted about it? I'm sure many people would disagree but the tons of triumph in the reporting that they lost their jobs is very distasteful to me especially in this job market. I don't want to live in a society where everyone is so uptight that they don't say anything without 5 levels of mental filtering because other some random stranger can completely screw them over.

If you bother to have read it, 2 men didn't lose their livelihood. 1 man did, and the person (who is female) who tweeted it did.

Sort of surprised you are +5 insightful when you missed the whole point.

2 people make a joke amongst themselves, loud enough that a person in front of them could hear it. Instead of turning around and asking them to stop, she posts on Twitter about it. She turned something that was private (as in, just a few people around where aware of) into something very very public. Public beyond the event she was at, she brought it out to the real world. On top of it, she included a photo of the guys.

She completely over reacted, and made a big issue out of something that might of been in bad taste, but was in a small way. And she lost her job for it. Which is good. Unfortunately, one of the guys lost his job also, which I don't feel he should of. But thanks to her, what he did became public and his company comes out looking bad.

She went drama queen and it cost her job. Also cost a father of 3 his job also. Her fault for losing her job, and her fault for getting that other person fired.

True, but this this isn't the first time she's made questionable allegations of sexism [wordpress.com]. If it hadn't blown up and resulted in someone being sacked, it wouldn't have been the most impressive one either; her T-shirt stunt involved her being actively hostile towards a woman who wanted to include (non-sexualised) depictions of women, and who could've avoided the whole fuss if the T-shirt went with the safe option and used the stereotypical male geeks. She's an active disincentive to including women.

only one comment was sexual in nature. the dongle one. the other one was about forking being a form of flattery [ycombinator.com], which adria misconstrued as sexual. just as the dongle comment was inappropriate, it was equally inappropriate to post their picture to twitter w/o even confronting them.

Two employees, in public, on company time, wearing badges clearly identifying what company they work for, making totally inappropriate comments - they most certainly should be fired.

Firing Richards herself is the moronic thing. You don't fire the messenger. I have zero idea what SendGrid does - but "all publicity is good publicity" is a lie.

So random comments should get you fired because someone somewhere could possibly find them offensive? We don't even know what was really said. It likely, based on the odds, was probably fairly innocuous. Yet two people got fired and have had their lives severely damaged because someone else was slightly offended.

If certain groups are supposed to get special "don't offend" privileges then don't be shocked when other groups view that group as trouble and lawsuit magnets and don't want to associate with that group in any context where a single phrase or word could get them damaged.

Why not blame the people actually doing the firing? Some random person posting on twitter does not have the authority to fire anybody. The people who make the decisions (in both companies, in this case) should take responsibility for their actions.

Frankly I have no issue with firing her. She has just proven herself to be a hypocritical drama queen (see some of her other posts). She is apparently supposed to be an "evangelist" and yet just screwed over members of the community for which she must interface to do her job. They should have fired her sooner! Sorry miss, you've just become ineffective in your position, there's the door.

Everyone says he shouldn't have been fired, but from what can be implied from the company press release's this may not have been his first incident of this nature.

That may just be them covering their ass, but if not, and he has already had warnings for similar behavior then firing him may well have been the correct response. I tend to think that because both of these developers worked at the same company, and only one has been fired that this is the more likely scenario than them just getting rid of him

There's no doubt the tech-industry could use a lot less pimply-teenage-boy-ism. But in this case, no: firing Richards is about on par. If you TFA you'll find she made jokes herself, on twitter (not even an overheard private conversation), about stuffing socks down pants in TSA pat-downs. That's pretty much exactly in the same stratum as the jokes she was complaining about---both childish and sex-related, neither sexist. If one is worth firing, then so is the other (although both firings are over-reactions, to put it mildly).

I'm not sure firing her was an over-reaction. Her employer is trying to be a five-nines service provider. Her poor judgement got their services DDoS'd off the net for 5 hours today. Sounds like a pretty good case for firing to me.

Incidentally, I'm working with a customer of that company right now, and their downtime caused us a bunch of extra work. But I'm not bitter. Not at all.

No, no they shouldn't. They're not drones.. They're not slaves. They're employees. There's supposed to be a difference.. Telling jokes should not get you fired. Bad performance at your job should get you fired.

These PC pantywaists are going to be the ruin of us all. Telling a joke based on stereotypes is not 'sexism.' Deciding (not) to hire or fire someone based on gender is sexism. Of course, insecure people like Richards rule the roost now so now suddenly we're all responsible for HER feelings.

Is it? Richards herself tweeted publicly to a friend about stuffing his pants next time he goes through a TSA check. If the first guy deserved to get fired for making stupid jokes to his friend sitting in the audience at a conference why shouldn't Richards get fired for doing the same thing publicly via Twitter?

The first thing you see (still, actually) when you look at her Twitter page is that she's an evangelist at SendGrid. So her comments are just as much linked to her company as the two yahoos' behind her were.

Personally, I don't think anyone deserved to get fired, unless there were a lot of other things going on. The two male jokers were being childish, in relative private. Richards was being childish in a very public way. All of them needed to be told to knock it off.

The whole "striking a blow against sexism" is a silly attempt to spin the incident into something it's not. There's nothing in the story that suggests anything sexist, unless Richards did what she did because the jokers were male.

She was also there on the company dime, wasting her company's resources. Her company doesn't control the PyCon environment. Her company isn't paying her to moderate it. Sometimes being an adult includes tuning out annoyances and getting the job done. If you can't do this, then don't venture outside your company's sphere of control. Maybe the jokes were crass, but they weren't directed at her (or at anyone or any gender in particular).

She is someone who has said things like black people can't be racist like whites and posted pictures of playing card games making fun if AIDS. While those aren't the worst things ever she made herself look like a hypocritical ass while dragging her employer into it. To the point of openly saying they support her which may or may not have been true. People have been fired for a lot less than that in the US.

Bullshit! Certainly these guys could be taken aside and counseled for conduct that reflected badly, certainly apologizing could be in order. But firing? No way. In fact the conversation didn't even include her - she eavesdropped on them and when she realized they worked for a sponsoring company she figured out she could make a grand splash. Drama drama drama, she got exactly what she wished for - oodles of attention. What she didn't bargain for was the fact that most of us with common sense see right through her for what she is.

As for firing her? Oh that had to happen. No way should she be considered for a position that requires her to interface with a group of people she just alienated.No way would I send her to talk to programmers as a manager. If I were a developer and she were brought into my workspaces I'd leave. I wouldn't want to be in the same room as this woman. Why would I risk my job around someone who has a proven track record of blowing things out of proportion and casting aspersions?! Forget it, she can stay far far away so far as I'm concerned. When she figures out how to act like an adult and grows a thicker skin then maybe she should be allowed out with the big kids. She can't possibly function in the position she was cast for and shouldn't be employed as such. For that matter I sure hope any future employer figures out Google well enough to see what's in store for them if they hire her...

women in the workplace are just as bad, as anyone who passes by their gossip-groups at lunch know

I'm especially amused by all the posts by the outraged saying the guys referenced in the article were "pricks" or "dicks", but they would fire up the holy sexist smokescreen should the woman be referred to as a "cunt" or "twat".

Part of the problem with this whole thing lies in the power dynamic. As white males (well, at least I am - and I suspect a large number of others here are too), we are rarely put in situations where we are not in power.

I'm a white male and am in situations where I am not in power all the time. The way the corporate world works puts engineers at the bottom of the org chart.

On the other hand I imagine that some women in the tech industry feel about as comfortable as I would if I were walking through Harlem alone at night.

Except in Harlem at night, particularly if you chose to walk through the grounds of a housing project, you might actually run across persons who not only feel you do not belong in their neighborhood, but are perfectly willing to enforce their preferences with violence. And you will have no one who will back you up, during or after the fact. Comparing geeks to gangbangers is ridiculous.

If you believe that women have a right to be in the workplace, then I think you should believe that they have a right to feel as safe and respected as we do

How they feel is largely up to them. If they're going to feel disrespected because someone somewhere made a dick joke, or unsafe because there's a lot of guys around, that's not something anyone needs to cater to.

Also, "but mommy, she was doing it too!" didn't work when we were kids, and it doesn't work now either.

You don't see a problem with a person trying to establish a standard and punish another person for violating it, when she herself does not follow said standard? There's a related legal principle called "unclean hands"... sometimes "she did it too" does apply.

(I was going to say that some of this was the woman's fault, but her tweet wasn't really seeking attention - just asking for help - so I feel like it's less her fault than others')

Naa, that's BS. Did you read her whole mock-heroic (though I think the 'mock' was unintentional) description of her rationale?

IMO she deserved it. This was a matter for reprimands by the conference and if needed by their employers, NOT but the public at large. She breached the two mens privacy in a serious way and if I was her employer I'd be worried about blow back from what she did now and what she'll do in the future.

IMO it's never OK to "twitter shame" someone, it's the pinnacle of passive-aggressive behavior where you take a complaint public and ask for mob justice. What happens next time where she calls for the pitchforks and torches and someone actually is harmed by some mentally ill person that got fired up by her?

Only if she was not sexually harassing the men. That is right. She was sexually harassing the men. She did not complain because the joke was sexual in nature, as those kinds of jokes clearly don't offend her, as she was making sexual jokes at the same event. She made the complain because she didn't feel that "men" should be afforded the same rights as women, and she used her position in the media to harass these men.

An inappropriate joke about a "big dongle" is not sexual harassment, it is anatomical humour. It was not aimed at her, or her sex. It was certainly not appropriate for that setting, but not worth firing someone over.

She overreacted by publicly shaming them on twitter instead of just confronting them directly or complaining to the conference organizers (as per the code of conduct for the conference).

The employer of one of the developers overreacted by firing him.

There was a backlash against her for her actions, and so her employer felt that she could no longer do her job (developer relations) and fired her.

The conference organizers did the right thing...everyone else screwed up to varying degrees.